Friends’ bread-making brings slice of small-town life to Warwick neighborhoods

Sunday mornings are bringing a slice of small-town life to people who live in area neighborhoods, in the form of fresh-baked breads.

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By
BARBARA POLICHETTI
Posted Aug. 13, 2014 @ 10:20 pm

WARWICK, R.I. — Sunday mornings are bringing a slice of small-town life — literally — to people who live in the city’s Gaspee neighborhood and Pawtuxet Village in Warwick and Cranston.

They can pad to their front door in their pajamas, open it, and find a plastic bag cradling a fragrant loaf of bread that popped out of the oven less than 24 hours before.

The perfectly domed loaves, which come in four varieties, are the handiwork of three friends who decided to combine their love of food and each other to create a cottage industry.

David D’Amato, his partner Phil Perry and their friend Jessica Jones said that for almost a year they’d been talking about coming up with a venture that would allow them to earn money on the side and also give them quality time together.

Last fall they decided that they’d love to be able to tap Jones’ training as a pastry chef and come up with a business that would enable them to deliver loaves of wholesome bread to their neighbors.

They let the idea percolate through the winter, and then, around April, Perry saw an online advertisement for a commercial-size mixer and they were committed.

“We had to drive out to the New York-Connecticut line to get it,” said Perry who lives with D’Amato in the Gaspee neighborhood.

Jones, who is a culinary graduate of Johnson & Wales University and a trained pastry chef, remembers the long ride back with the mixer’s big bowl bumping alongside her on the back seat.

“Up until then it had just been an idea,” Jones said. “But at that point we realized that this is a reality — we’re going to be baking bread.”

They started telling Perry and D’Amato’s neighbors, made up a few fliers, and on Sunday, June 1, delivered nearly 40 loaves of bread to homes in eastern Warwick and Cranston.

Word spread quickly and now the three friends are slowly expanding their delivery area as they spend long hours baking on Saturday.

After a little sleep, they hop in their cars early Sunday morning and deliver loaves of French, country white, country wheat and honey oat bread to more than 100 seriously addicted customers.

As they make their rounds, they often stop to hand loaves to customers who are out walking their dogs or working in their gardens, D’Amato said.

“It’s all about community,” Jones said. “We put a lot of love into what we do. We are baking for our neighbors.”

It was a neighbor who helped them find a place to bake by putting them in touch with the Asbury United Methodist Church, at Fair Street and Ann Mary Brown Drive, D’Amato said.

Aided by D’Amato and Perry’s two children, the three friends now spend their Saturdays in the spacious kitchen of the church rectory, kneading dough and hoisting batch after batch of bread in and out of the ovens.

The baking process alone is attracting customers as the intoxicatingly sweet and tangy smell of yeast surrounds the church and wafts through the neighborhood every Saturday.

Their customer list includes area Councilman Steve Colantuono and Mayor Scott Avedisian who also lives in the neighborhood.

“It’s a great local business story, and it’s great for the neighborhood,” Avedisian said last weekend when he and Colantuono stopped by the church kitchen to visit. “It doesn’t get any better than someone delivering fresh-baked bread to your door.”

Getting back to basics was key, Jones and D’Amato said.

Each bread recipe consists of a handful of natural ingredients “that you can pronounce,” they said. For instance, the French loaf is made of unbleached wheat flour, salt, and yeast — and that’s it.

They also wanted their loaves to be affordable, at $3 each, except for the honey oat which is $4.

Customers either drop off their payments in advance or leave an envelope on delivery day.

So far the system has worked seamlessly, D’Amato said, except in the few cases where loaves of bread have been hijacked and eaten by bold squirrels. “We ask people to leave their storm doors unlocked so we can tuck the bread in between,” he said.

The Saturday baking days are long for the three friends who also have full-time jobs, but they say they get through it together and count it as family time.

“We all have war wounds,” Perry said as he pointed to burn marks on his hand.

They said they love the fact that some customers send them pictures of their children eating the bread ,and they hope they are encouraging home-cooking and old-fashioned values.

They have named their company “J&D Breads,” and for now are remaining purposely low-tech, they said, relying on the fliers they hand out and the recommendations of their customers to grow their business.

“We hope that this shows what you can accomplish when you pull together as a community,” D’Amato said. “And that you can profit, whether it’s through money or happiness.”